Stalin's Great Purge | Armchair History TV Original

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Youtube's unneccesary censorship is going to be it's downfall

To tell you just how ridiculous the charges could get, here's how my Georgian great aunt (so 3 generations back) almost got sent to a gulag, or even worse: She owned a tractor manufacturing factory, and since you could just write an unsigned accusation letter at the time, she got accused of being an ennemy to the state because she allegedly put plane engines instead of tractor engines. Fortunately, a friend of hers worked in the police and was able to see the letter before anybody else and quickly discarded it. I don't remember every detail (it is my great aunt after all), but I remember this did indeed happen.

It's absolutely soul crushing to think about how many people within the Soviet Union were murdered just to satiate the ego of this one megalomaniac.

This was truly by far one of Stalin's worst decisions, and it bit him in the ass hard when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union.

Considering Lenin's means of dealing with those who opposed his revolution, I think we can safely say this ruthless "phase" was by no means new.

Wtf. And how quickly people forget history.

The best book on this that I've found is "The Road to Terror: Stalin and the Self-destruction of the Bolsheviks". It's full of frightening documents that historians pulled straight out of the Kremlin from that era after the Soviet Union collapsed and they showed how Stalin temporarily reduced oppression to trick potential troublemakers into revealing themselves. They even found confessions that had blood stains on them.

Just as Stalin praised Hitler's "night of long knives", Mao Zedong called Stalin a great man and copied his methods almost to the letter 30 years later.

Here’s an interesting Soviet tidbit: One of the creative methods of torture used by Soviet interrogators is actually feeding their defendants with tons of food! This was their way of swaying accusations of human rights violation, as they can have plausible confirmation that they are feeding their prisoners well The only catch is that all the food is very salty and there were no drinks to wash it down (except for the extremely salty soup known as balanda); the interrogators will offer the overstuffed defendant water IF they sign a confession letter, which most of them probably do after feeling too groggy from all the salty meat and bread

As a post Soviet country, 50 percent of what we learn in our schools about 20th century in our history is cruelty of Soviet politics. We suffered two periods of hunger which resulted in a loss of half of native population because local authoritarian decided to confiscate 90 percent of our cattle (and our diet is heavily based on meat) during collectivization. Our best minds (writers, poets) executed (almost entirely). We had system of labor camps, the most famous one of which is ALZHIR - Akmola (city name) camp for wives of nation's "traitors", where completely innocent wives of purge's victims had too suffer for years.

Stalin Great Purge was because his Father used to Punish him Serverly

Meanwhile a hoi4 player: fails to manage paranoia and gets all their good generals killed, and lose the moment Barbarossa begins

Last time I was this early, Stalin was alive!

Stalin paid the price for his foolishness during operation Barbarossa the pudge come back to bite him

Goodness this feels like such a short summary of such a deep topic.

Stalin always checked his list twice

Rokossovsky, one of the greatest WW2 generals, was purged and put in the camp. Later, in 1940 if i'm not mistaken, they freed him as the red army personnel had doubled and they were lacking talented officers. He was beaten, lacked food etc. Later on, he would keep his total loyalty to Stalin after his death and would strongly oppose destalinization campaign.

4:03 Semyon Budyonny (second guy on the left) was not purged , he was one of the best general both in the civil war and ww2

Here before the tankies start talking about all the "Good things Stalin did"